I find it fascinating that every time there is a tragedy of some kind in our world, people are soon gathering at churches or other locations and lighting candles in memory of loved ones who have died. It seems our instinctive response as human beings confronted with so much darkness is to try to let a little bit of light shine through the gloom.
Light and darkness is the subject of 1 John 1:5-7. Listen for God’s word to you…
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
John tells us he has a message that he and his community have heard from Christ and that they have to pass on. This message includes at least three important things we need to know about light. First, he tells us that God is light. There is no darkness at all in God.
Notice that John says God IS light. God is not simply like light; he is light. Light is so much associated with God’s character that the two are inseparable.
Think back to the beginning of the Bible: “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” It was the first thing God created. All creation owes its existence and its sustenance to light.
At the Exodus, when Yahweh led his people Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he guided them using a glory cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night—the “shekinah” glory of God.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
Then at the very end of the Bible, when we are introduced to the City of God, the New Jerusalem, we read, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” (Revelation 21:23-25)
God is light. What does this statement tell us about God?
It tells us that God is full of splendor and glory. What is more glorious than the light of the rising sun piercing the darkness of the night, scattering the shadows?
It tells us that God is revealing. C. S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[1]
In the same way, I can say, “I believe in God as I believe in the sun, not because I see him, but because by him I see everything else.” God is the great revealer. His light shows us life as it really is.
This statement, “God is light,” also suggests something of the purity and holiness of God. There is nothing of darkness in him in which evil can hide.
It also tells us of the guidance of God. Light shows the way. The road that is well lit is the easiest one to follow. To say that God is light is to say that he offers his direction to our steps. He is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. (Psalm 119:105)
In addition to telling us that God is light, John very emphatically tells us that there is no darkness in God at all. As we shall see as we move through our study of 1 John, the author is in love with these dramatic contrasts: light versus darkness, good versus evil, love versus hate, righteousness versus sin, obedience versus disobedience, faith versus unbelief, love of the Father versus love of the world, life versus death.
As William Barclay points out, darkness stands for the very opposite of the Christian life, for the Christless life, the life that is hostile to the light, ignorant, chaotic, immoral, unfruitful, and loveless. Thankfully, though, we do not have to remain in the darkness. Rather, we can step into the light of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
During a trip to England some years ago, I rented a car. On the last two days of my trip, I had some free time so I decided to drive from London down to visit Canterbury Cathedral in the south. Then my plan was to drive back from there to catch my plane out of London on Monday.
Now, I had driven in England before, and so I had experience driving on the other side of the road. What I did not factor into the equation was that I would be driving on roads I had never been on before, and due to my schedule and the time of year, I would be doing some of that driving in the dark.
As the sun went down during my drive from London to Canterbury, I suddenly realized what a ridiculous plan I had made. I began to wonder: “What if I cannot find the right roads to take in the dark? What will I do if I cannot find my hotel?” Did I mention that I did not have GPS?
Well, I did find my way and I had a wonderful time in Canterbury, but then I faced the same problem driving back to London the next night. All I can tell you is that I prayed a lot during the drive down to Canterbury and during the drive back to London. I did make it through without any mishaps, but it would have been a lot easier to do the drive both ways in the light of day.
Now imagine if I had tried to drive both directions without any light at all. That drive would have gone from difficult to impossible. At least I had the help of headlights on my rental car, lighted signs, and lighted roads.
I believe what the author of 1 John is suggesting to us is that trying to navigate our way through life without God is kind of like my trying to drive from London to Canterbury and back without any physical light at all. We need the light of God to guide us through life.
The second thing John tells us is that if we claim fellowship with God, but walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
John here may have been responding to an early form of what was later called Gnosticism. Remember, last week we talked about the Docetists who believed that Jesus only appeared or seemed to have a human body. The Docetist was a type of Gnostic. The Gnostics believed that this world was created by some lesser deity, and therefore, this world and the body in particular, are evil, but spirit is good. The whole goal of religion, then, according to the Gnostic, is to free the spirit from the body. This is achieved through secret “gnosis” or knowledge.
It seems that the Gnostics had two approaches to dealing with the body. Some thought the best approach was to deny all the desires of the body. These Gnostics focused on fasting and denied the good of marriage. Other Gnostics, apparently, taught that it does not matter what one does with the body since it is evil anyway.
It is an early form of this latter type of Gnosticism to which John may have been responding. In effect he says: “You say that you are walking in the light of a special, secret knowledge of God and his ways, yet your evil deeds deny this, because you act like it does not matter what we do with our bodies. It does matter!”
In response to this Gnostic way of thinking, John asserts two important points. First, if we claim to have fellowship with God, who is light, then we must walk in the light.
William Barclay explains,
This does not mean that a man must be perfect before he can have fellowship with God; if that were the case, all of us would be shut out. But it does mean that he will spend his whole life in the awareness of his obligations, in the effort to fulfill them and in penitence when he fails. It will mean that he will never think that sin does not matter; it will mean that the nearer he comes to God, the more terrible sin will be to him.
Second, John asserts that the early Gnostics have the wrong idea of truth. If we claim some special enlightenment, but still walk in darkness, then we are not doing the truth.
We read something very much like this in John 3:21, “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
This means that for us as Christians, truth is not simply some intellectual exercise of the mind. If we believe certain things with our minds, it should also change the way we live. Truth involves thinking and acting. If we spend all our time merely studying the Bible and discussing what it says, but it does not affect how we live, then we have missed what Christianity is all about.
The story is told of a desert nomad who woke up in the middle of the night and was extremely hungry. He kept a bowl of dates beside his bed for just such occasions, but he had to light a candle in order to see them. The nomad took a bite from one of the dates and found a worm in it, so he threw the rotten date outside of his tent. He tried another date, found another worm, and threw that date away as well. Finally, the nomad concluded that if things continued on like this he would not have any dates left to eat and he was very hungry. Therefore, the nomad blew out the candle and continued eating the dates.
There are many who prefer darkness and denial to the light of reality. However, that is not the way God wants us to live. He does not want us to go on eating rotten dates. So, what is the answer?
We need to step out of the darkness and into the light.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
This leads to the third point that John makes: that if we walk in the light, we have two things. The first thing we have is fellowship with other Christians. In darkness, we walk alone, but in the light, we walk with a great company of saints.
Once again, I love what William Barclay says about this. He writes,
Truth is the creator of fellowship. If men are really walking in the light, they have fellowship one with another. No belief can be fully Christian if it separates a man from his fellow-men. No Church can be exclusive and still be the Church of Christ. That which destroys fellowship cannot be true.
This reveals that the darkness John was especially concerned about in verse six, was the darkness of believing that we can have fellowship with God without at the same time maintaining fellowship with other followers of Christ. This was part of the error of the early Gnostics. They were dividing their followers from the rest of the Church by claiming that they alone had a superior knowledge.
The more that we walk in the light of Christ, the more we will recognize our need to lay down our weapons of hatred, condemnation, and destruction, so that we may walk hand in hand with our brothers and sisters and thus bring to realization the kingdom of God.
David Jackman has written,
Where Christians are at variance, or separate from one another, it is always true that someone is already walking out of fellowship with Christ. This does not mean that we shall all agree about everything, but that is not the essence of fellowship anyway. It is about loving one another and valuing one another, so that we can agree to differ without severing the ties that bind us to one another as sons and daughters of the light.
I have had times in my life where it was very hard for me to see, let alone accept, this truth. I remember so well when I first went to Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. I was just twenty-two years old, but I knew my Bible and, looking back, I probably thought I had all the answers, or most of them anyway. I had such a hard time that first year at Princeton. I was learning so many new things, hearing so many things I disagreed with, meeting people who were very different from me.
I remember sitting down with Sam Moffett, Professor of Missions. We had lunch together and I laid out all my concerns before him. He listened to all that I had to say very quietly and then he spoke these few words: “Being with people you agree with all the time isn’t missionary.”
That was it. I thought there had to be something more. However, I thought about those eleven words for a long time, and eventually I chose to stay at Princeton Seminary. Now, looking back thirty-five years later, I am so glad that I did.
If we are walking in the light of Jesus’ love, we will walk hand in hand with all those who claim him as Lord and Master, even if we do not agree about everything all the time.
The final thing John tells us in our passage for today is that: if we walk in the light, we have cleansing by the blood of Christ.
The more we come into the light, the more we become aware of our own messiness, but that also creates an opportunity to have our messiness cleaned up.
C. S. Lewis once wrote to a former student whom he had the opportunity to lead to faith in Jesus Christ, and he said…
I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience etc doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be v. muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, & the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the v. sign of His presence.[2]
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